Bob Carnegie

Workers’ Liberty supporter Bob Carnegie has been elected to the Queensland Branch Secretary position of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) in this year’s Quadrennial elections. Bob assumes office for a four year term on 1 July.

Bob was one of four challengers for the position vacated by retiring incumbent Mick Carr. Bob was defeated at the last MUA Quadrennial elections of 2011 by Carr by only two votes (504 to 506).

Comments

After polling on 31 January, it seems probable that Labor has regained office in Queensland. It's a startling turnaround from the 2012 state election, in which Labor suffered what we described as "the worst electoral crash for Labor in Australian history...one of the worst electoral setbacks for an established social democratic party ever, anywhere in the world". Then, Labor was reduced to seven seats in Queensland's 89-seat parliament, and Campbell Newman's right-wing LNP won office in a landslide.

This time Labor leader Annastacia Palaczuk said: "Can I thank the union movement? Because it it is the union movement that stands up each and every day and fights for better conditions for workers across this state."

Palaszczuk campaigned on a "no asset sale agenda" and said a Labor government would not offload the $37 billion worth of assets the LNP wanted to privatise.

Add new comment

The crisis in Australian unionism is one of great concern to all working-class activists. In a series of articles I will criticise some of the current trends and try to show that there are ways out.

The main tools I have at my disposal are nearly 40 years of militant trade union and working-class activism and wide (but not deep) reading of socialist theory. I hope these articles are of interest. Whether they are insructive and helpful, that is for others to decide.

Add new comment

My first two articles dealing with attempts to organise defence base workers in Australia attempted to highlight the problems with on the ground organising, union arguments over which unions should cover these workers, the workers’ battle for jobs and redundancy payment and most important of all, the horrorible effect of contracting out of services has on the wages and conditions of those workers concerned.

Add new comment

In the mid 1990s, Paul Keating's Labor government in Australia decided to outsource work on defence bases to private contractors. This work was overseen by that great excuse for a conservative in hiding, the leader of the Victorian right wing of the Australian Labor Party, Senator Robert Ray.

Add new comment

The problem of corruption and misuse of union funds has plagued workers’ organisations almost from the heroic beginnings of trade unions.

More than a hundred years ago my hero (we all have a few) Eugene Debs, in a famous speech about the emancipatory nature of organised labour, pleaded that the labour movement had been “betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches and sold out by leaders.” 100 years on it is time we of the left tackle this problem and use a powerful moral argument to start bringing this problem to heel.

Add new comment

Construction workers recently won an eight-week strike at the Queensland Children’s Hospital in Brisbane.

There’s a greater spirit of militancy in the industry now than for some years. The current Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) campaign has been met with strong employer resistance [EBAs are the main form of collective agreement in Australian industry].

The renewal of some of the four-year agreements have been met with a much stronger resistance from employers than there ever has been in the history of the EBA system.